Anna Karenina

“hey’ve come!” “Here he is!” “Which one?” “Rather young, eh?” “Why, my
dear soul, she looks more dead than alive!” were the comments in the
crowd, when Levin, meeting his bride in the entrance, walked with her
into the church.

Stepan Arkadyevitch told his wife the cause of the delay, and the
guests were whispering it with smiles to one another. Levin saw nothing
and no one; he did not take his eyes off his bride.

Everyone said she had lost her looks dreadfully of late, and was not
nearly so pretty on her wedding day as usual; but Levin did not think
so. He looked at her hair done up high, with the long white veil and
white flowers and the high, stand-up, scalloped collar, that in such a
maidenly fashion hid her long neck at the sides and only showed it in
front, her strikingly slender figure, and it seemed to him that she
looked better than ever—not because these flowers, this veil, this gown
from Paris added anything to her beauty; but because, in spite of the
elaborate sumptuousness of her attire, the expression of her sweet
face, of her eyes, of her lips was still her own characteristic
expression of guileless truthfulness.

“I was beginning to think you meant to run away,” she said, and smiled
to him.

“It’s so stupid, what happened to me, I’m ashamed to speak of it!” he
said, reddening, and he was obliged to turn to Sergey Ivanovitch, who
came up to him.

“This is a pretty story of yours about the shirt!” said Sergey
Ivanovitch, shaking his head and smiling.

“Yes, yes!” answered Levin, without an idea of what they were talking
about.

“Now, Kostya, you have to decide,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch with an air
of mock dismay, “a weighty question. You are at this moment just in the
humor to appreciate all its gravity. They ask me, are they to light the
candles that have been lighted before or candles that have never been
lighted? It’s a matter of ten roubles,” he added, relaxing his lips
into a smile. “I have decided, but I was afraid you might not agree.”

Levin saw it was a joke, but he could not smile.

“Well, how’s it to be then?—unlighted or lighted candles? that’s the
question.”

“Yes, yes, unlighted.”

“Oh, I’m very glad. The question’s decided!” said Stepan Arkadyevitch,
smiling. “How silly men are, though, in this position,” he said to
Tchirikov, when Levin, after looking absently at him, had moved back to
his bride.

“Kitty, mind you’re the first to step on the carpet,” said Countess
Nordston, coming up. “You’re a nice person!” she said to Levin.

“Aren’t you frightened, eh?” said Marya Dmitrievna, an old aunt.

“Are you cold? You’re pale. Stop a minute, stoop down,” said Kitty’s
sister, Madame Lvova, and with her plump, handsome arms she smilingly
set straight the flowers on her head.

Dolly came up, tried to say something, but could not speak, cried, and
then laughed unnaturally.

Kitty looked at all of them with the same absent eyes as Levin.

Meanwhile the officiating clergy had got into their vestments, and the
priest and deacon came out to the lectern, which stood in the forepart
of the church. The priest turned to Levin saying something. Levin did
not hear what the priest said.

“Take the bride’s hand and lead her up,” the best man said to Levin.

It was a long while before Levin could make out what was expected of
him. For a long time they tried to set him right and made him begin
again—because he kept taking Kitty by the wrong arm or with the wrong
arm—till he understood at last that what he had to do was, without
changing his position, to take her right hand in his right hand. When
at last he had taken the bride’s hand in the correct way, the priest
walked a few paces in front of them and stopped at the lectern. The
crowd of friends and relations moved after them, with a buzz of talk
and a rustle of skirts. Someone stooped down and pulled out the bride’s
train. The church became so still that the drops of wax could be heard
falling from the candles.

The little old priest in his ecclesiastical cap, with his long
silvery-gray locks of hair parted behind his ears, was fumbling with
something at the lectern, putting out his little old hands from under
the heavy silver vestment with the gold cross on the back of it.

Stepan Arkadyevitch approached him cautiously, whispered something, and
making a sign to Levin, walked back again.

The priest lighted two candles, wreathed with flowers, and holding them
sideways so that the wax dropped slowly from them he turned, facing the
bridal pair. The priest was the same old man that had confessed Levin.
He looked with weary and melancholy eyes at the bride and bridegroom,
sighed, and putting his right hand out from his vestment, blessed the
bridegroom with it, and also with a shade of solicitous tenderness laid
the crossed fingers on the bowed head of Kitty. Then he gave them the
candles, and taking the censer, moved slowly away from them.

“Can it be true?” thought Levin, and he looked round at his bride.
Looking down at her he saw her face in profile, and from the scarcely
perceptible quiver of her lips and eyelashes he knew she was aware of
his eyes upon her. She did not look round, but the high scalloped
collar, that reached her little pink ear, trembled faintly. He saw that
a sigh was held back in her throat, and the little hand in the long
glove shook as it held the candle.

All the fuss of the shirt, of being late, all the talk of friends and
relations, their annoyance, his ludicrous position—all suddenly passed
away and he was filled with joy and dread.

The handsome, stately head-deacon wearing a silver robe and his curly
locks standing out at each side of his head, stepped smartly forward,
and lifting his stole on two fingers, stood opposite the priest.

“Blessed be the name of the Lord,” the solemn syllables rang out slowly
one after another, setting the air quivering with waves of sound.

“Blessed is the name of our God, from the beginning, is now, and ever
shall be,” the little old priest answered in a submissive, piping
voice, still fingering something at the lectern. And the full chorus of
the unseen choir rose up, filling the whole church, from the windows to
the vaulted roof, with broad waves of melody. It grew stronger, rested
for an instant, and slowly died away.

They prayed, as they always do, for peace from on high and for
salvation, for the Holy Synod, and for the Tsar; they prayed, too, for
the servants of God, Konstantin and Ekaterina, now plighting their
troth.

“Vouchsafe to them love made perfect, peace and help, O Lord, we
beseech Thee,” the whole church seemed to breathe with the voice of the
head deacon.

Levin heard the words, and they impressed him. “How did they guess that
it is help, just help that one wants?” he thought, recalling all his
fears and doubts of late. “What do I know? what can I do in this
fearful business,” he thought, “without help? Yes, it is help I want
now.”

When the deacon had finished the prayer for the Imperial family, the
priest turned to the bridal pair with a book: “Eternal God, that
joinest together in love them that were separate,” he read in a gentle,
piping voice: “who hast ordained the union of holy wedlock that cannot
be set asunder, Thou who didst bless Isaac and Rebecca and their
descendants, according to Thy Holy Covenant; bless Thy servants,
Konstantin and Ekaterina, leading them in the path of all good works.
For gracious and merciful art Thou, our Lord, and glory be to Thee, the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, now and ever shall be.”

“Amen!” the unseen choir sent rolling again upon the air.

“‘Joinest together in love them that were separate.’ What deep meaning
in those words, and how they correspond with what one feels at this
moment,” thought Levin. “Is she feeling the same as I?”

And looking round, he met her eyes, and from their expression he
concluded that she was understanding it just as he was. But this was a
mistake; she almost completely missed the meaning of the words of the
service; she had not heard them, in fact. She could not listen to them
and take them in, so strong was the one feeling that filled her breast
and grew stronger and stronger. That feeling was joy at the completion
of the process that for the last month and a half had been going on in
her soul, and had during those six weeks been a joy and a torture to
her. On the day when in the drawing-room of the house in Arbaty Street
she had gone up to him in her brown dress, and given herself to him
without a word—on that day, at that hour, there took place in her heart
a complete severance from all her old life, and a quite different, new,
utterly strange life had begun for her, while the old life was actually
going on as before. Those six weeks had for her been a time of the
utmost bliss and the utmost misery. All her life, all her desires and
hopes were concentrated on this one man, still uncomprehended by her,
to whom she was bound by a feeling of alternate attraction and
repulsion, even less comprehended than the man himself, and all the
while she was going on living in the outward conditions of her old
life. Living the old life, she was horrified at herself, at her utter
insurmountable callousness to all her own past, to things, to habits,
to the people she had loved, who loved her—to her mother, who was
wounded by her indifference, to her kind, tender father, till then
dearer than all the world. At one moment she was horrified at this
indifference, at another she rejoiced at what had brought her to this
indifference. She could not frame a thought, not a wish apart from life
with this man; but this new life was not yet, and she could not even
picture it clearly to herself. There was only anticipation, the dread
and joy of the new and the unknown. And now behold—anticipation and
uncertainty and remorse at the abandonment of the old life—all was
ending, and the new was beginning. This new life could not but have
terrors for her inexperience; but, terrible or not, the change had been
wrought six weeks before in her soul, and this was merely the final
sanction of what had long been completed in her heart.

Turning again to the lectern, the priest with some difficulty took
Kitty’s little ring, and asking Levin for his hand, put it on the first
joint of his finger. “The servant of God, Konstantin, plights his troth
to the servant of God, Ekaterina.” And putting his big ring on Kitty’s
touchingly weak, pink little finger, the priest said the same thing.

And the bridal pair tried several times to understand what they had to
do, and each time made some mistake and were corrected by the priest in
a whisper. At last, having duly performed the ceremony, having signed
the rings with the cross, the priest handed Kitty the big ring, and
Levin the little one. Again they were puzzled, and passed the rings
from hand to hand, still without doing what was expected.

Dolly, Tchirikov, and Stepan Arkadyevitch stepped forward to set them
right. There was an interval of hesitation, whispering, and smiles; but
the expression of solemn emotion on the faces of the betrothed pair did
not change: on the contrary, in their perplexity over their hands they
looked more grave and deeply moved than before, and the smile with
which Stepan Arkadyevitch whispered to them that now they would each
put on their own ring died away on his lips. He had a feeling that any
smile would jar on them.

“Thou who didst from the beginning create male and female,” the priest
read after the exchange of rings, “from Thee woman was given to man to
be a helpmeet to him, and for the procreation of children. O Lord, our
God, who hast poured down the blessings of Thy Truth according to Thy
Holy Covenant upon Thy chosen servants, our fathers, from generation to
generation, bless Thy servants Konstantin and Ekaterina, and make their
troth fast in faith, and union of hearts, and truth, and love....”

Levin felt more and more that all his ideas of marriage, all his dreams
of how he would order his life, were mere childishness, and that it was
something he had not understood hitherto, and now understood less than
ever, though it was being performed upon him. The lump in his throat
rose higher and higher, tears that would not be checked came into his
eyes.